Notes from the Editors

NOTES FROM THE EDITORS The Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies convened its SixtyFirst Annual Meeting in the French Quarter of New Orleans 27–29 March 2014. Organized by Jimmy Huck of Tulane University and sponsored by Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Loyola University, the conference featured a theme of “Latin America’s Global Presence.” Program chairs Uriel Quesada of Loyola and Stephen Morris of Middle Tennessee State University organized panels in Literature & Humanities and History & Social Sciences respectively. Following the SECOLAS Awards Banquet, Dr. Marcello Canuto, director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane, delivered the keynote address, “Maya Road Warriors: The Kaanal Kings Building a Classic Maya Empire.” This volume features some of the best papers from the conference in article format. Thirteen of the 130 presenters at the conference submitted revised versions of their papers for publication. Following editorial and peer review and another round of revisions, the articles published in these pages represent a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, literature, history, and political science. We are happy to present these articles, and we are grateful for the help provided in this endeavor by our graduate assistant, Patty de Arcia, and our colleagues at Wiley-Blackwell, especially Martha Lovvoll. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Winthrop University , the two SECOLAS host institutions, offer significant financial and institutional support for the publication and success of this journal. In particular , we offer our gratitude to Professor Nancy Gutierrez, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Debra Boyd, Acting President and Provost at Winthrop, and Dr. Karen M. Kedrowski, Dean of College of Arts and Sciences at Winthrop for their continuing encouragement of both The Latin Americanist and SECOLAS. Gregory S. Crider and Jürgen Buchenau C  2015 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 ...